Personal care compositions have traditionally been sold as liquid products. These liquid personal care products typically comprise a substantial amount of water in the formula. Traditionally it has been difficult to include water sensitive actives which are chemically incompatible or hydrolytically sensitive, due to the nature of the aqueous environment of the liquid product. By eliminating the aqueous environment (the solvent), the personal care products of the present invention have improved shelf stability of water sensitive chemically incompatible and hydrolytically sensitive actives. During usage, the consumer adds water to the personal care product, which activates the water sensitive actives to deliver their consumer desirable benefit at the desired point of time of product application.
Additionally, the personal care product of the present invention expands the number and type of cosmetic actives that can be employed by the formulator and enables the delivery of new consumer benefits which have previously been difficult to achieve without dual compartment packaging or by the consumer having to mix differing compositions in a multi-step process. Such consumer benefits are “water activated” and include, but are not limited to, self-lathering (effervescence), self-warming, gradual hair lightening/blonding, gradual hair coloring, and visual color change of the product.